“It” is inanimate, “they” are plural, “she” is female, “he” is male or gender-unspecified.

This is down to how English developed as a language, with bit cribbed from Latin/German/Norse/French et cetera… Thus “him” (male), “her” (female), and “him” (gender-unspecified) come from the German Dative pronouns “ihm” (male), “ihr” (female) and “ihm” (inanimate/gender-unspecified)

English just fully-separated the inanimate and gender-unspecified into “it” and “him”, then extended the male/gender-unspecified correlation from the Dative and Genitive to cover the Nominative and Accusative as well.

(So, “special snowflakes” who refuse to subscribe to existing gender identities already have a set of long-established pronouns – they just so happen to match the male ones. But I only mention this to the really annoying ones who get right in your face about it…)

Well, given you just mentioned it to someone who wasn’t getting right in your face about it, I’d just like to only mention that your explanation is both (a) a summary of a certain Received View that is (b) as it happens completely historically and linguistically inaccurate. The usage of “they” as a gender neutral singular pronoun is as old and established as such a thing as the English language itself. It’s well known that it’s used in that way by canonical English authors from Chaucer to Dickens via Shakespeare, Austen and Thackeray. It’s only since the 19th Century that grammarians have attempted to retrospectively fit rules over English that were never actually followed in practice. So the answer is: yes, English does indeed have a perfectly good gender neutral singular pronoun that’s been used throughout it’s history. But it’s not “him”, it’s “they”.

I’m not a native English-speaker but I’m sure I learned that “it” is used for babies and animals, who are all setient. Or do you really imagine your cat is not a lot smarter than you? It’s in the definition of “cat” in every dictionary… or should be.

Only recently have English speakers become squeamish about “it” for babies. Read literature not even 100 years old and you will encounter it frequently–normally, in fact–for babies. And even doting Mommies would use it for their own small babes. Its use is less common now, but I still here it for smal

Nope… The English gender-unspecified pronouns are the same as the male pronouns, as a result of how the language developed from other languages. “It” is inanimate, whereas animate-gender-unspecified would be “he”.

This is similar to how the “-man” in “chairman”/”businessman”, and so on, is technically derived from the Germanic “Man” (referring to humanity in general) rather than the Germanic “Mann” (male human)

English just dropped the second “n”, and made things confusing… Hence, the German feminists claiming “Chairman” should be “Chairfrau” are clearly making a joke (it’s not “Chairmann”) whereas it’s harder to tell with the English-speaking equivalent

Not really but the subject is really debatable and ultimately very pedantic and silly. The best thing to do would be what the teasing children did and use her proper name. Another acceptable way of approaching it if you don’t know the name is “Are we sure this child is a girl? or “Are we sure this person is female.”

Actually i think they do. We have seen the team fail in a thousand different funny ways, but allowing them an occational win or atleast the concept that a win might be possible if they dont mess up (yeah right) could lead to a whole lot of good humour. I am all for making Buccaress atleast semi-competent.

Would you like to sing a quiet little song now? Please do. Nobody will hear it, so you don’t need to worry about that. Just sing–quiet and low. Seriously, can I give you permission to do that, or is that presumptuous of me?